pete williams. pete i know you can only stay with us for a brief time. so i will start with you. you were literally out of breath this morning as the decision was issued. run down the highlights for us. >> i want to know which of you thought this would be upheld as a tax decision. this is actually two decisions here, the first one looks at the central claim by opponents of the health care law who said congress can't do this because congress has the power to regulate commerce, but somebody who doesn't have insurance isn't engaged in commerce, and therefore is beyond the reach of this law, the supreme court actually agreeded with that by a vote of 5-4 with chief justice roberts joining the conservatives. but they didn't stop there, they then looked at the fallback argument that the government had, which said the congress can do this under its taxing authority and that's where the supreme court found the majority to uphold the law. chief justice roberts joined by the four liberals on the court said congress has the inherent power to tax someone and that basically they're taxing a choice, a choice not to have insurance, that's well within the congress power to tax, which is the supreme court said it's many times upheld in a variety of decisions. so that's the essence of the case. now there's one other part of this and that's medicaid, the states had complained that by forcing them to expand medicaid coverage. that was more than they should have to do. and the punishment if they didn't go along with that is they said the federal government can't kick them out of medicare entirely. that's the essence of the decision today, upholding the law, so now people who -- people basically have a choice, either buy insurance or pay a penalty, which the court said was a tax and curiously, that's what the law looked like in the first place anyway. you always had this choice of either abiding by the temprms o the law or pay this penalty or tax. it now becomes a bit of a dancing on the head of a pin thing to say whether the mandate is upheld or not or whether the mandate is upheld under the taxing authority. in any way, it's upheld anyway. >> let's talk about the two key personalities in this. for the longest time, if there was going to be one republican justice who sides on the side of the -- was anthony kennedy. andç roberts was the trojan hoe guy that bush put on there with the great credentials and was put on there as a partisan guy. maybe we got both of these guys totally wrong. >> based on the oral argument here at the end of march, there were actually many people who said that of the conservatives, chief justice roberts seemed to be the one who was most receptive. to the possibility of upholding the law. if you go back and look at the argument transcripts, it's justice kennedy who seems to be the most troubled by the health care law. so there was always an indication that it might be robert ors ken difficult but roberts i don't think was ever out of the play after you listened to the oral argument. >> mike saks sticks around. >> i remember explicitly the president insisting over the past two years that the individual mandate was not a tax. in fact i think we have a clip from that from a 2009 interview with george stephanopoulus. >> some of your critics say it's a tax increase. >> my critics say everything's a tax increase. there's critics who say i'm taking over every part of the economy. >> so you reject that? >> i absolutely reject that notion. >> this court essentially upheld the individual mandate as a tax. did they effectively correct the president today? >> they didn't as much2correct the president as they did say exactly what he really meant. every lower court that opined on this said that the president said it's not a tax, congress said it's not a tax, so it's not a tax. this was a complete john roberts maneuver here, he did not want to uphold it under the commerce clause, and that's where he joined the four conservatives and he wanted to push back at the administration. he did -- >> i think you're absolutely right. i think what happened was that roberts said, you know what? the government made the wrorng argument. the government's lawyer argued the wrong -- >> but this is the good argument. >> the government made the argument, but the court only one person, and that was kennedy during the oral arguments seemed at all receptive to the taxpayer argument. so this came as a big surprise that roberts actually went with the taxing power. and that's the way he could see daylight. well, roberts today kept the power for the court, kept its legitimacy and still managed to push the law the way he wanted to. masterful. >> john roberts said it's not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices. so i may not agree with this politically$ cut you voted for the guy, you get to live with him. i don't want to rip this law apart. >> let's keep in mind, that if it is a tax, which the court has said it is, you don't pay the tax number one, and only 2% to 5% of americans are going to be subject to this at all and perhaps even less in massachusetts. which does serve as sort of a model for this. only 1% of massachusetts residents are subject to the penalty that mitt romney put in place. >> let's keep this in mind, america is the only rich nation in the wor that has a large number of uninsured people. >> the big issue is actually the medicaid issue, the court held it as discretionary. do not have to. so a vast expansion of health care is now in jeopardy towards people in the 26 states that challenge the law and said that they had a gun to their head by the federal government to enroll into the medicaid expansion. that's going to be a big deal, that's going to happen in november, that people will vote, whether or not they actually think they should have their poorest people enrolled in medicaid. >> thank you so much for joining us, mike saks from "the huffington post." and next, the law stays, so how will it work for patients? the head of the national physician's alliance joins us from as "the cycle" rolls on for thursday june 28. uncer ] this was how my day began. a little bird told me about a band... ♪ an old man shared some fish stories... ♪ oooh, my turn. ♪ she was in paris, but we talked for hours... everyone else buzzed about the band. there's a wireless mind inside all of us. so, where to next? ♪ so, where to next? ♪ what started as a whisper every day, millions of people choose to do the right thing. there's an insurance company that does that, too. liberty mutual insurance. responsibility. what's your policy? [ male announcer ] you're at the age where you don't get thrown by curveballs. ♪ this is the age of knowing how to get things done. so, why let erectile dysfunction get in your way? talk to your doctor about viagra. 20 million men already have. ask your doctor if your heart is healthy enough for sex. do not take viagra if you take nitrates for chest pain; it may cause an unsafe drop in blood pressure. side effects include headache, flushing, upset stomach, and abnormal vision. to avoid long-term injury, seek immediate medical help for an erection lasting more than four hours. stop taking viagra and call your doctor right away if you experience a sudden decrease or loss in vision or hearing. this is the age of taking action. viagra. talk to your doctor. without freshly-made pasta. you could also cut corners by making it without 100% real cheddar cheese. but then...it wouldn't be stouffer's mac & cheese. just one of over 70 satisfying recipes for one from stouffer's. >>> there is more to the health care decision than courts and politics. all of us will or do need health care and as the law is phased in, the 32 million american who is don't have it now will become eligible for coverage. by 2014 an estimated 95% of americans will be insured. those are just numbers, our health care system is clearly broken. we spend more money than any other developed country and we rank 37th in quality of care. here to talk about this is the head of the pennsylvania school of medicine, she's president of the national physician's alliance. i want to start by asking you this, the law survives for today, basically. but we are still going to be operating the system where we have strong private insurance companies and it seems that this law curbs some of the worst excesses of private insurance, but a lot of the problems that people complain about with insurance still exist. how big of an improvement is this, really? >> the decision upholding the affordable care act today is a fundamental defense of the rights of americans of life, liberty and the pursuit of happy.ç >> one of the provisions in the law that's certainly gotten a lot of attention in the political world involves medicare. i think you know, $500 billion of cuts phased in over a few years, republicans reign against democrats on this in 2010, they still mentioned it in 2012. the response is this is not actually going to come from patient care. from a provider standpoint, explain how that works how you can have $20 million coming out of the system and not have patient care -- >> part of that money is a reduction in fraudulent billing in the system. and in fact, the obama administration last year has recovered four billion dollars of fraud lent or illegal building in the system. they have already cracked down and they're doing a great job of it. secondly the law reduces taxpayer subsidies to offer medicare advantage plans, and those medicare advantage plans are going to be on a level playing field with traditional medicare. and a piece of that traditional $500 billion number is actually in the ten years that the law was written. >> it was something that president bush enookted which was supposed to create thisç competitive free market system, actually ended up being more expensive and less efficient and that's where most of the cuts come from. troy, did you have something? >> i would like you linking this to life and liberty, it's a nun neekly intimate decision and american law. but some doctors tell me that they're a little concerned now that we're going to have the government so involved in the cost of health care, that now we're going to have -- what studies and tests doctors can do and really being involved in the sort of medicine that's being practiced rather than so-called evidence-based medicine. do you see that as a problem. >> first of all what the law does is get the doctor and the patient back together and together they will be able to make decisions. the person that was in between myself and my patients were private health insurance companies. and because of all of the new regulations of private health insurance companies that are contained in the law, that problem is going to go away. health insurance companies are going to have to cover patients preexisting conditions. that's always been the main thing that's been between myself and my patients. secondly, the law puts into place a number of mechanisms to have physicians like myself get better information that together with our patients we can make the right decision for each individual patient. the law supports a lot of new research that will be unbiassed, it won't involve funding from pharmaceutical or medical device companies so we can get better more çunbiassed research on really what best treatments are and use that information together with our patients to make decisions. >> maybe i'll open this up to the table here, but it strikes me listening to valerie here paints a good picture of what this law is going to do. my rant at the end about how a lot of the individual components of this when you explain them to people are very popular. it's going to mean something to people -- i wonder how much time do you think it really will take for people to realize this is what's actually in it. >> most of the provisions haven't been enacted yet, so having them actually in place would be a step in that direction to people actually understanding what this bill is all about. and frankly, i don't expect that this bill is perfect, i don't expect that everybody does. i think it passed with a step forward and something that we could build on, rather than now having to start from scratch and wait decades more which we really can't afford to wait. we have a stepping block forward that we can build on. >> i think interestingly, to steve's point, it is a complicated bill, people still don't really understand what's in it. i think you're also short shrifting the american public, and they do sort of in a macrosort of way don't like it. only 26% of americans wanted this bill upheld in it's ç entirety. 67% wanted the individual mandate overturned. so i don't know if more time -- >> i'm not short shrifting the american public, but i'm also not short shrifting the millions of dollars that were spent convincing people that this is a terrible, terrible bill. >> so you think people have been influenced by bad ads? >> yes. and it is susceptible to negative advertising. >> i don't think we have seen a lot of what's coming up in this bill and they don't like it. >> statistics lie all the time and when we break the bill down into certain components, people say actually i like that, i like that, i like that. >> the clock doesn't lie, we're out of time for this segment, i'm going to say thank you to valerie for joining us. >>> the entire house is set to vote on contempt charges against eric holder in the next hour. we're putting that in "the spin cycle" that's just ahead. >>> time for the "your business" entrepreneur of the week. mechanicacallister's grandfathed it in ç184. it's tugs helped ships back to shore. it's survived and is about to be passed to the family's fifth generation. >>> we're watching other politicking happening now. the house is set to vote on whether to hold attorney general eric holder in contempt of the senate. a numberç of democrats are expected to join with their republican colleagues in voting for contempt. as many as 30 dems could dessert holder making him the first cabinet member in history to be held in contempt of congress. we have luke russert on the hill. thanks for coming back. >> so, luke, what's going on? when do we expect this vote to happen? >> right now we're in a series of procedural votes and we're having a debate from both sides on the floor. but by about 5:30 p.m., you will have had two votes that are occurring in the house. you will have a vote to hold eric holder in criminal contempt of congress, and a vote to hold eric holder in civil contempt of congress. the civil one essentially the house if they wanted to could hire their own lawyer, their own council and pursue this case into various courts that would then try to instruct mr. holder to cooperate with the congressional investigation. the problem with that is that courts move slowly and the house's authority on this expires come january when a new congress is voted in. what we're really seeing here is a political show. the red meat of the -- they want eric holder's head, so they're going to get it today out of the house, but a lot of democrats say, and gop leaders admit that the timing is not -- it will not be the lead story, which it would be on any other day and the minority whip steny hoyer on the house floor, usually the market is 87 days this. will happen in a week. it's a fascinating development here on capitol hill, eric holder will be the first cabinet member held in contempt of congress in the history of the republic. >> thank you, luke for joining us again. so, guys what are we to make of this vote. >> i think luke hit the key point there at the end is that the timing is not a coincidence. and this is everything about -- it has pretty good political instincts about what's good for his party and what's bad. he has very little room to maneuver. this is a scandal that was born sort of on the fringes, it's come into the main stream, but it's starting to look like a fringe theme, some members of congress are saying that what this really was was a conscious attempt to bring drugs to mexican drug gangs, it's starting to sound really fringy. we're going to do it in the deadest period for that. >> but now we see theç fortune magazine take on the story, they're not actually trying to let -- >> that was never atf policy. >> but the guys did walk. that's not a lie. the fortune magazine piece is alleging that the gun walking wasn't the plan of the atf, but the guns walked. we know they walked. >> who debunked the fortune magazine article? >> town hall. nobody's disputing that piece. so curious timing on the vote today and speaking of curious timing let's go back to the story that we have been talking about today in the cable news world and on the twitter-verse. >> they have said that it can't be upheld under the commerce clause, the individual mandate can't. >> the individual mandate is surviving as a tax. >> millions of americans heard that the supreme court has upheld the health care law. >> big news day. >> yeah, fun day to be in news. >> for peteing that they keep talking about is that it's upheld as a tax, but the other four justices, said no, the commerce clause fits here, but we want to make a deal, we want to get this done. you want to have it as a tax, fine. four justices say that this does fit as interstate commerce. roberts found an idea that's consistent in his mind with jurisprudence. but i'm looking at the reaction onç the right to chief justice roberts today. he did not appreciate the needle that they're threading here. i think they actually called him a traitor to conservatism. a conservative republican saying i lost two friends today, america and chief justice roberts. >> not overdramatic. it is a great tweet and if you look back at what these republicans have been saying about chief justice john roberts in the past. it was slightly different. i think we have a tweet from john boehner, supreme court justices john roberts and samuel alito, president bush's two successful appointments to the supreme court aren't wh
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